Norms, Possibility, and Permissibility

Here is a collection of pieces related to Zoya Street's article that translated a discussion between Masayuki Hambalek and Shinji Matsunaga.

First of all, the piece itself, wherein Masayuki states that "When you can't do something in a digital game, it simply doesn't exist, so it doesn't lower the degree of freedom". Matsunaga wrote a blog piece wherein he asserted "a subtly different definition": "Since digital games can cut straight to can and cannot, they don't need extrinsic norms." Street translates some of it in his piece, but here it is in the original Japanese.

In response to some of Street's thoughts in his piece in regards to the overlap between norms and rules as it pertains to queer representation in games, Matsunaga then wrote a response on his blog, this time in English.

I then responded with some mixed commentary on both the theory itself, and the queer representation aspects, and how those relate to games with highly authored narratives (in contrast to Street's focus on Tomodachi Life, a game based on free choices of the player.) Street and Matsunaga have both commented on the article.

Kimiko Koopman then responded to my piece, and I had some thoughts on that as well.

This has all been great discussion so far, and I hope to see more of it. I'll update this section of my blog as articles come.